The Cathedral — Oles Honchar

The Cathedral is a novel by Oles Honchar, published in 1968 and immediately banned by Soviet censorship. The work became a landmark event in Ukrainian culture.

At the center of the plot is the struggle to preserve an ancient Cossack cathedral that local bureaucrats plan to demolish. The cathedral becomes a symbol of all Ukrainian cultural memory, spiritual heritage, and national identity.

The novel triggered a wave of persecution against the author and his supporters but became one of the most widely read Ukrainian works of the 20th century.